Four Women

After all they had been through, they found joy.

by Dewey Williams

I ’M GOING TO TELL YOU ABOUT two sets of women — each a mother and daughter who adopted one another. One is a biblical story, and the other is a contemporary story. In both, soci­ety’s rules dictated that these women shouldn’t be bonding at all. And, yet, their stories show us that in connecting, we find joy. If we’ll trust God to do so, God will bring us the connections we need.

Journey to Joy

The story of Naomi and Ruth is one of the most familiar in Scripture. We often focus more on Ruth, which makes sense, because the book in the Bible is titled after her. But I think of it as a story more about Naomi. Indeed, the book starts and ends with Naomi.

Naomi and her husband, both Hebrew, had moved with their two sons to the neighboring nation of Moab because of a famine in their own land. We don’t know if Naomi was happy, but we can imagine that she was at least hopeful for the future — with her husband and sons and the pros­pect of having grandchildren someday.

Then we learn that Naomi’s husband suddenly dies. Her sons marry Moabite women and later those sons also die. Bereft, Naomi decides to return to her hometown of Bethlehem, and she encourages her daughters-in-law to stay with their own Moabite people. Yet one of them, Ruth, has become attached to Naomi and says to her, “Don’t plead with me to abandon you or to return and not follow you. For wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you live, I will live; your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried” (Ruth 1:16-17a).

Together, they move to Bethlehem, where Naomi grows bitter and depressed about her situation: no husband, no sons, no grandchildren, no hope. On top of that she had a daughter-in-law, Ruth, with her who had her own needs and desires.

After some maneuvering, however, Ruth marries one of Naomi’s relatives, Boaz, and they have a son. This is where we eventually find Naomi — holding Ruth’s baby in her lap. What a joyous picture. This woman who has lost so much is now enjoying her role as caregiver to Ruth and Boaz’s child.

In addition, the Bible records that the women who lived nearby started saying, “A son has been born to Naomi” (4:17). A connecting joy seemed to permeate the commu­nity. This wasn’t a personal joy. No, real joy is shared.

Through the story of Naomi and Ruth, we learn that the journey to joy might take us through devastated aspira­tions and broken lives — fertile ground for God to reveal how He works. If our intact aspirations and lives hold God away, a shattering provides an opportunity for God to get through. And God often does so through the people around us.

Journey Back to Joy

Now, let’s look at the contemporary story. Regina was a little girl when her mother turned her over to Social Services, saying that she couldn’t take care of her. Regina then moved from foster homes to other temporary placements and group homes. Regina says she stopped counting when the number of placements hit 30. She tells stories of even being abused in some of these placements. Sometimes the system failed her. Sometimes the placements failed her. And sometimes she made it hard for anyone to care for her.

At the age of 12, Regina ran away and turned herself in at the local police station. Her case went to court, and she was sent to another group home for young girls. While there she met a counselor named Jeanne, who connected with and encouraged her in a way that no one had ever been able to in the past. Regina sometimes would call Jeanne “Mama.” And Jeanne let Regina know that there is always somebody for everybody.

Regina came alive while Jeanne mentored her, and Jeanne became committed to seeing this young girl thrive. To Regina, God had placed Jeanne on this earth to help her. At one point they even entertained the notion that Jeanne would adopt Regina, and they both got excited about the possi­bility of Regina getting to leave the group shelter and have a more normal upbringing in a loving home. Who could oppose such a marvelous opportunity for this young lady? Jeanne petitioned the courts to adopt Regina.

There was one problem: They weren’t the same ethnicity. In the 1970s, there were strict rules forbidding cross-racial adoptions in that community. The motives were honorable and well-intended; they wanted children to have upbringings that were culturally aligned with their family of origin. But with no one stepping up to adopt Regina, surely this wouldn’t prevent the adoption?

In fact, the petition was denied. As a matter of fact, the court ruled that Jeanne’s continued relationship with Regina was hampering other potential placements that the court deemed better for the girl. The day they both thought that Regina would get to go home with Jeanne was the day Jeanne was ordered to cease all contact with her.

Eventually, Regina graduated from high school and college and started an upscale beauty salon. It was so successful that she opened a second one. Yet all of Regina’s attempts over the years to find Jeanne proved unsuccessful. Regina was thriving professionally and finan­cially, but she felt a need to tell the pain of her story so that other foster children would know that there is hope and that they’re not alone.

More than two decades after her last meeting with Jeanne in the shel­ter, Regina wrote her story — a book titled Somebody’s Someone, which became a sensation. One day, Regina was on a radio program telling her story when one of the former employees of that long-ago group home heard her. The woman called Jeanne and told her about the book and how to contact Regina through her website. Jeanne’s health was failing, and she had fallen on hard times.

Regina and Jeanne eventually reconnected, 25 years after they had last seen one another at the group home. Jeanne loved Regina as her daughter, and Regina loved Jeanne as her mother. They went to the same courthouse that had denied the adoption and petitioned that Jeanne would become Regina’s permanent mother. This time they were successful. Regina was in her forties when she was finally adopted, and she moved the elderly Jeanne into her home to take care of her.

Regina had found an enduring truth, one that is universal: We may think we’re alone, but that isn’t God’s plan for us. And it isn’t the way God wants us to feel. You may think you’re alone, but that isn’t God’s plan for you. And it isn’t the way God wants you to feel.

For all four women, systems and circumstances tried to steal their joy and isolate them. Looking at Naomi holding the baby Obed in her lap and looking at Regina with Jeanne settled in her home, I can almost hear them saying to each other, “After all I’ve been through, I still found joy. I found you.”

God didn’t leave any of those women alone but sent each the relationship she needed — connecting joy — a joy more than doubled, because it was shared.

Dewey Williams is pastor of Mt. Bright Missionary Baptist Church in Hillsborough, North Caroli­na, a doctoral candidate at the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology at Virginia Union University, and a graduate of Duke Divinity School. His first book, Finding Joy on Death Row: Unexpected Lessons from Lives We Discarded, is available for purchase anywhere books are sold. Read more about Dewey and get in touch with him online at FindingJoyonDeathRow.org.

This article originally appeared in HomeLife magazine (January 2024). For more articles like this, subscribe to HomeLife.